It would be easy to take a little credit for the sudden upswing in the form of the Vancouver Canadians, being as this blog has blown holes through them for lack of effort for weeks now.

This past week, the clash of blog and team reached a flashpoint when Notes From The Nat went for the throat and the players turned their fury on to their opponents, with results that weren’t just good, they were great.

I could say that it was all part of some big reverse psychology plan, that I never meant what I said about the C’s and that the mission to kickstart them is now accomplished… but that’d be a lie.

I’ve put so much crap on this team this year, in the blog and off it, that anything they do from here goes far beyond ‘we’ll do it to spite him’ and into ‘we’ll do it despite him.’

The Vancouver Canadians turned it around with the arrival of Mike Lissman. He was the missing piece of the puzzle - the clubhouse captain that the team seriously needed, who could inspire fear and respect, push a guy up against the wall and get in his face, or pat him on the back in appreciation of an above-average effort.

Lissman, to paraphrase Kenny Mayne, rocks the party that rocks the piñata.

The difference has been noticeable on the scoresheet, but in the last few days, that difference has jumped off the page and hit the field, where guys that were renowned for ’slumping about the field’ (to quote one regular ballpark attendee describing Jeremy Barfield) are now swinging with vengeance in their hearts and chasing every ball like it’s the final out of the World Series.  

Two nights ago, the pitching staff (well, two of them anyway) threw a three-hit shutout. That doesn’t happen if the infield plays dropsies with grounders, and until this past week, you could guarantee any C’s game would feature at last three booted balls.

But as the pitchers churned through Yakima Bears hitters, the infielders steeled their nerves, made some big plays, and kept the Grizzlies in check on the basepaths. 

And they did enough with the bat to make a win out of it, with Dusty Napoleon playing RBI machine once again. 

An anomaly? One could have made that case were it not for the follow-up yesterday, when the Canadians were faced with something you rarely see at this level - a knuckleballer. Former catcher Houston Summers (who should really be in a band with Dallas Winters) dazzled the C’s with his soft-toss dancing balls and kept them whiffing through most of the game as his team put up a 4-2 lead behind his 5 innings of two-hit ball.

But this is short-season baseball, and even the greatest pitcher in the league is taken out of the game when he hits his pitch count.

When Summers hit the showers, the C’s went gnarly on his replacement.

It was the 8th inning and the C’s were down in front of a decent daytime Nat Bailey Stadium home crowd of just over 4000 people. Jordan Meaker had just come out to pitch for the Bears, and facing him was Dante Love.

I really like Love’s game, and not because he has one. I like his game because he *doesn’t* have one, and yet he still finds a way to get on base, or move runners around, or panic a defense into an error, or chew up a dozen pitches before conceding his out. 

The Love Machine knows that a new pitcher has a better than average chance of starting shakily. He’ll be more likely to lose the handle on his breaking stuff, or have trouble locating his fastball, and the lead-off man has to, has to, has to exhibit more patience than one might ordinarily ask for in making that new pitcher earn the right to an out.

Love played the game and made Meaker hit the zone, and Meaker wasn’t up to it.

Thus, without altering his batting average in any way, Dante Love had laid the foundation for a comeback with his specialty; the smart walk. 

Rodney Rutherford was up next, with a BA of .159 BA (just .009 above what has become known as The Rutherford Line) and a desire to show he’s worth his 20th round draft spot.

I couldn’t tell you if the error at shortstop that followed was down to Rutherford hitting a tough grounder, or hustling to 1st and making the defense second guess themselves, or even whether he shouted something at Justin Parker earlier in the game and so rattled the guy that he dropped one in the 8th… all I can tell you is that Parker lost the ball and the pressure Brother Love put on this new pitcher had just tripled.

Jareck West was up next, and Wild Wild hasn’t been on what you’d call a tear of late. Gone are the game-breaking doubles of the first few weeks of the season, and in their place are squibs, grounders, pop flies and the occasional dying quail.

Wild Wild needs hits. But Wild Wild knew that there was a bigger job to be done here. And thus he dropped a perfect sac bunt and put his teammates a base closer to leveling the scores.

Now, I don’t know if I wouldn’t have had West swing away in this situation, personally. The pitcher is in trouble, nobody is warmed up, and a base hit scores one and keeps that pressure on with two men on. A sac bunt, while making the runs a little easier, also gives an out to a guy who really needs an out.

Either way, I’m not going to criticize the decision too hard - it’s a judgment call and there’s really no correct play. Props to West for doing the team thing, anyhoo.

Up next was ‘Junior Bacon’ Dave Thomas, who took a mighty swing but couldn’t beat the center fielder. Two outs, and Meaker was nearly out of his jam. 

Or at least he would have been, if not for the presence of ‘The Tornado’ Francisco Tirado.

Tirado took more punishment from me early this season than I think anyone has since Landon Powell asked his 2004 playoff series opponents, "Are you gonna dogpile when you win tomorrow?"

He was, what, zero for 197 at one point this season? It wasn’t pretty. And he was racking up errors on top of that.

But then he went introspective, looked around, realized he’s a professional baseball player, and started doing what pro ballplayers do… he just cranked on fastballs, left and right.

Tirado is perhaps the best hitter at the moment in this C’s lineup. If you take out his horrible start to the year, his BA would be around .325 right now. And it’s just getting better every day. He’s hitting the cover off the ball, and then running out and beating that cover to death with a Louisville Slugger.

So yeah, not a bad guy to have swinging away when you have two guys in scoring position.

Base hit, two runs score, Yakima’s lead is gone.

But it doesn’t end there, because next up was Dusty Napoleon, and holy cow this kid has a high clutch factor. Last season, though he didn’t play often (thanks to being one of three catchers), he came up with several big at bats that kept the C’s competitive, which was why I was so amped to see him come back for a second season. Given an everyday role, The Duster is a valued commodity - an RBI machine, a contact hitter, a power guy when needed, and a smart baller.

So yeah, not a bad guy to have swinging away when the pitcher is sweating on just losing his team’s lead.

Base hit, one run scores, Vancouver hits the lead.

Now, if you’re a Hollywood screenwriter, this is where the guy who started the turnaround - we’ll call him the Robert Redford of the side - comes up to the plate and hits the ball that doesn’t just leave the park, it hits the lightstand, blows up seventeen miles of electrical grid, and goes into history as the shot heard around Little Mountain.

The hitter, the inspiration of the team, the clubhouse general: Mike Lissman.

The hit: Deep flyball to left.

The result: Gone. Two runs score, Canadians lead 7-4. Rack it.

Hate me all you like, C’s. But I just got a little man-crush going on your new-found determination to abuse any and all opponents.

Keep playing the game the right way, and I’ll chronicle the hell out of it. 

	July 24, 2008
	Final    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9      R   H   E   Yakima   2   0   0   0   2   0   0   0   0      4   7   4   Vancouver   0   0   0   0   2   0   0   5   X      7   5   0  Recap | Box | W: K. Smalley (2-0, 3.60); L: J. Meaker (1-1, 0.95); SV: J. Guzman (8) HR: VAN: M. Lissman (3).

NOTES:
* Lyndon Little was at the game for The Sun and put together a great game report on the affair. 

* Those who wondered why Goose Guzman came in to close out the last inning of a blowout last week and pontificated that it might mean he was going up, were off the mark. Turns out the pitcher before him, Dan Thomas, was on a strict pitch count, so the team had no option but to bring in someone fresh, even with the game in the bag.

* Speaking of pitchers being sent out in odd situations, turns out the decision to send out catcher Julio Rivera in the 14th inning of a pitched battle on the 13th wasn’t actually made by manager Rick Magnante. Turns out Oakland’s roving pitching instructor was at the game and sent out the instructions to end it with Rivera, rather than chew the bullpen up. Apologies to Rick Magnante for the assumption it was his call, though I will stand by my statement that allowing Rivera to wear his Oakleys while he pitched was a kick to the gut of the people who paid to attend.

* From Little’s game report in today’s Sun: "The C’s have lost their top starting pitcher, Carlos Hernandez, to a
callup. Hernandez (1-0, 1.82 ERA) pitched seven shutout innings in his
last outing Tuesday against Yakima before being promoted to Kane County
of the Midwest League." Enjoy the higher level, Carlos. You deserve it.